Bodies of Water (37 page)

BREATHING WATER

Three years after leaving Lake Gormlaith, Vermont, Effie Greer is coming home. The unspoiled lake, surrounded by dense woods and patches of wild blueberries, is the place where she spent idyllic childhood summers at her grandparents’ cottage. And it’s where Effie’s tempestuous relationship with her college boyfriend, Max, culminated in a tragedy she can never forget.

Effie had hoped to save Max from his troubled past, and in the process became his victim. Since then, she’s wandered from one city to another, living like a fugitive. But now Max is gone, and as Effie paints and restores the ramshackle cottage, she forms new bonds—with an old school friend, with her widowed grandmother, and with Devin, an artist and carpenter summering nearby. Slowly, she’s discovering a resilience and tenderness she didn’t know she possessed, and—buoyed by the lake’s cool, forgiving waters—she may even learn to save herself.

Wrenching yet ultimately uplifting, here is a novel of survival, hope, and absolution, from a writer of extraordinary insight and depth.

GRACE

 

Every family photograph hides a story. Some are suffused with warmth and joy, others reflect the dull ache of disappointed dreams. For thirteen-year-old Trevor Kennedy, taking photos helps make sense of his fractured world. His father, Kurt, struggles to keep a business going while also caring for Trevor’s aging grandfather, whose hoarding has reached dangerous levels. Trevor’s mother, Elsbeth, all but ignores her son while doting on his five-year-old sister, Gracy, and pilfering useless drugstore items.

Trevor knows he can count on little Gracy’s unconditional love and his art teacher’s encouragement. None of that compensates for the bullying he has endured at school for as long as he can remember. But where Trevor once silently tolerated the jabs and name-calling, now anger surges through him in ways he’s powerless to control.

Only Crystal, a store clerk dealing with her own loss, sees the deep fissures in the Kennedy family—in the haunting photographs Trevor brings to be developed, and in the palpable distance between Elsbeth and her son. And as their lives become more intertwined, each will be pushed to the breaking point, with shattering, unforeseeable consequences.

NEARER THAN THE SKY

 

When Indie Brown was four years old, she was struck by lightning. In the oft-told version of the story, Indie’s life was heroically saved by her mother. But Indie’s own recollection of the event, while hazy, is very different.

Most of Indie’s childhood memories are like this—tinged with vague, unsettling images and suspicions. Her mother, Judy, fussed over her pretty youngest daughter, Lily, as much as she ignored Indie. That neglect, coupled with the death of her beloved older brother, is the reason Indie now lives far away in rural Maine. It’s why her relationship with Lily is filled with tension, and why she dreads the thought of flying back to Arizona. But she has no choice. Judy is gravely ill, and Lily, struggling with a challenge of her own, needs her help.

In Arizona, faced with Lily’s hysteria and their mother’s instability, Indie slowly begins to confront the truth about her half-remembered past and the legacy that still haunts her family. And as she revisits her childhood, with its nightmares and lost innocence, she finds she must reevaluate the choices of her adulthood—including her most precious relationships.

THIS GLITTERING WORLD

 

One November morning, Ben Bailey walks out of his Flagstaff, Arizona, home to retrieve the paper. Instead, he finds Ricky Begay, a young Navajo man, beaten and dying in the newly fallen snow.

Unable to forget the incident, especially once he meets Ricky’s sister, Shadi, Ben begins to question everything, from his job as a part-time history professor to his fiancée, Sara. When Ben first met Sara, he was mesmerized by her optimism and easy confidence. These days, their relationship only reinforces a loneliness that stretches back to his fractured childhood.

Ben decides to discover the truth about Ricky’s death, both for Shadi’s sake and in hopes of filling in the cracks in his own life. Yet the answers leave him torn—between responsibility and happiness, between his once-certain future and the choices that could liberate him from a delicate web of lies he has spun.

UNDRESSING THE MOON

Dark and compassionate, graceful yet raw,
Undressing the Moon
explores the seams between childhood and adulthood, between love and loss . . .

 

At thirty, Piper Kincaid feels too young to be dying. Cancer has eaten away her strength; she’d be alone but for a childhood friend who’s come home by chance. Yet with all the questions of her future before her, she’s adrift in the past, remembering the fateful summer she turned fourteen and her life changed forever.

Her nervous father’s job search seemed stalled for good, as he hung around the house watching her mother’s every move. What he and Piper had both dreaded at last came to pass: Her restless, artistic mother, who smelled of lilacs and showed Piper beauty, finally left.

With no one to rely on, Piper struggled to hold on to what was important. She had a brother who loved her and a teacher enthralled with her potential. But her mother’s absence, her father’s distance, and a volatile secret threatened her delicate balance.

Now Piper is once again left with the jagged pieces of a shattered life. If she is ever going to put herself back together, she’ll have to begin with the summer that broke them all....

THE HUNGRY SEASON

It’s been five years since the Mason family vacationed at the lakeside cottage in northeastern Vermont, close to where prizewinning novelist Samuel Mason grew up. The summers that Sam, his wife, Mena, and their twins Franny and Finn spent at Lake Gormlaith were noisy, chaotic, and nearly perfect. But since Franny’s death, the Masons have been flailing, one step away from falling apart. Lake Gormlaith is Sam’s last, best hope of rescuing his son from a destructive path and salvaging what’s left of his family.

As Sam struggles with grief, writer’s block, and a looming deadline, Mena tries to repair the marital bond she once thought was unbreakable. But even in this secluded place, the unexpected—in the form of an over-zealous fan, a surprising friendship, and a second chance—can change everything.

From the acclaimed author of
Two Rivers
comes a compelling and beautifully told story of hope, family, and above all, hunger—for food, sex, love, and success—and for a way back to wholeness when a part of oneself has been lost forever.

TWO RIVERS

Two Rivers
is a powerful, haunting tale of enduring love, destructive secrets, and opportunities that arrive in disguise . . .

 

In Two Rivers, Vermont, Harper Montgomery is living a life overshadowed by grief and guilt. Since the death of his wife, Betsy, twelve years earlier, Harper has narrowed his world to working at the local railroad and raising his daughter, Shelly, the best way he knows how. Still wracked with sorrow over the loss of his lifelong love and plagued by his role in a brutal, long-ago crime, he wants only to make amends for his past mistakes.

Then one fall day, a train derails in Two Rivers, and amid the wreckage Harper finds an unexpected chance at atonement. One of the survivors, a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl with mismatched eyes and skin the color of blackberries, needs a place to stay. Though filled with misgivings, Harper offers to take Maggie in. But it isn’t long before he begins to suspect that Maggie’s appearance in Two Rivers is not the simple case of happenstance it first appeared to be.